This blog is about using ICTs to develop climate change preparedness solutions built around Energy Internet and autonomous eVehicles

Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview

Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.

Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with autonomous eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. These new energy architectures will also significantly reduce our carbon footprint. For more details please see:

Monday, June 29, 2009

[Here is an excellent example of a unique partnership between MIT, Cisco, EMX to build a large data center in Holyoke, MA. With the advent of cap and trade, peak oil , shortage of energy supplies, and inadequate capacity transmission lines many organizations are realizing that locating your own independent sources of renewable power for your data center will be critical and provide a significant competitive advantage in the coming years. According to Grupp and Ellis there are only 6 sites left in the entire USA that can support a modern 40 Mw data center! As governments start to understand the significance of climate change and order a moratorium on building new coal plants or shutting down existing ones, not only will the cost of power skyrocket, but it simply may not be available at any price. Those sites that have arranged for their own source of energy, independent of the electrical grid, such as on-site windmills, run of the river turbines etc will be the real winners. And most of this capital deployment of data centers in rural/remote areas can be paid for though carbon offsets. Of course, high speed optical networks are essential for this strategy –BSA]

Data centers are running out of space and powerhttp://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/28/study-data-center-supply-near-all-time-low/

"Data Center Overload"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html

Cisco, EMC Team with MIT to Launch $100M Green Data Centerhttp://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/06/11/cisco-emc-team-with-mit-launch-100m-green-data-centerThe city of Holyoke, with a ready source of cheap, relatively clean hydroelectic power, will host a new, energy efficient data center that will bring innovation and jobs to the city.

The data center will be managed and funded by the four main partners in the facility: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cisco Systems, the University of Massachusetts and EMC.

While the project is just at the launch of a 120-day planning phase, there are big hopes for the facility. "The potential for breakthrough technologies and research is enormous, and both the center and collaboration will undoubtedly serve to lift up the City of Holyoke and regional economies throughout Western Massachusetts," governor Deval Patrick said.

In addition to being the hub of a community-redevelopment project, the facility, if and when it is finished, will be a high-performance computing environment that will help expand the research and development capabitilities of the companies and schools that work there.

And hydroelectric power has long been a draw for big tech projects like the Holyoke facility, although rarely in as urban a setting as Holyoke -- the city is 10 miles outside Springfield, Mass., and is just 90 miles from Boston. Google's "Project 02," a code name for its massive data center in The Dalles, Ore., was sited in that location because of the cheap and abundant energy from a nearby hydroelectric plant. And last year, Microsoft was reportedly looking to site a data center near Quincy, Wash., and its nearby hydroelectric facility.

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About Me

Bill St. Arnaud is a R&E Network and Green IT consultant who works with clients on a variety of subjects such as the next generation research and education and Internet networks. He also works with clients to develop practical solutions to reduce GHG emissions such as free broadband and dynamiccharging of eVehicles (See http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/) . View my complete profile